Number one: I’m
an urban dweller. I live in New York City, and I like crowds and noise.
Number two: I hate being cold. Number three: I have an incredibly vivid
imagination, which often gets the best of me. So when I was in PMY
editor-in-chief Richard Thiel’s office, kicking around ideas with
coworkers about where my annual fishing trip for the sportfishing issue
would take place, I surprised even myself.

“What about Mexico?”
one editor asked; “Hawaii?” queried another. “Nah,”
I retorted. “I’ve never been ice fishing. That’d be
fun.” Which brings me to number four: I often have ideas that sound
great at first but end up going awry. More on this later.

Moments after that
meeting, I was on the phone with PMY Midwest sales rep and ice
fisherman Tim Schmitt. We immediately began organizing our trip to the
Sportsman’s Lodge, located on Lake of the Woods in Baudette, Minnesota,
just south of the Canadian border and 70 miles northwest of International
Falls, the coldest city in the United States. Then Schmitt bailed, leaving
me—a 5'1" city girl—to fend for myself in the wilds of
northern Minnesota.

My adventure really
began at the Minneapolis airport, where I met pilot Taylor Huether of
Cirrus Design (see “Fancy Dancy Avionics,”
this story). The original plan was to fly me into Baudette’s municipal
airport, where I’d meet up with Sportsman’s Lodge’s
owner, Gregg Hennum. But an ice storm the previous night in Baudette made
it impossible to land there, so Huether said we’d fly into Warroad
airport, where I’d pick up a car and drive to the Sportsman’s
Lodge myself. Sounded great.

We took off, no problem.
Yet, as the sun set, I began to notice the utter lack of street lights,
cars, houses, and other signs of urban life on the ground below. We landed,
and Bruce Thompson (better known as The Airport Guy), took my luggage
out to the car. And that’s when the terror set in.

The car was a rusted,
dented, circa-1981 Oldsmobile with rinky-dink tires and a plug dangling
out from the hood. The interior was even less promising: wiring falling
out of places it generally shouldn’t (the door and dashboard), 181,000
miles on the odometer, and burn marks in the seats. Although the ride
was free (go figure) and, as such, quite gracious of Thompson, this was
officially the least road-worthy car I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Worse,
I had to drive the thing alone, through the ice and dark, with no cellphone
reception—and nobody seemed bothered by this except me. “Someone
just filled ‘er up, I think. The gauges inside don’t work,
but you’ll be fine,” Thompson assured me with a genuine smile.
Though I appreciated the hospitality, I was sure this tin can was going
to be my death sentence.